Bureau of Reclamation drops Lake Estes level for maintenance

By John Cordsen Trail-Gazette

Posted:
11/22/2012 09:14:19 AM MST

Mud, plants and algae from the lake bottom are exposed on Monday as Lake Estes water level is lowered.
(
Walt Hester
)

Lake Estes is a mere shadow of its normal self as water levels have dropped dramatically over the past couple of weeks while the Bureau of Reclamation gets ready for some annual maintenance on the overall Colorado-Big Thompson water projects in the area.

The bureau stopped diverting water through the Adams Tunnel into the lake on Nov. 5, as well as moving water from Lake Estes through the Olympus Tunnel to the southern power arm of the Colorado-Big Thompson water diversion, storage and delivery project, of which Estes, Marys and East Portal are a part. This was in preparation for some regular maintenance projects on that section.

Water that would normally hit the three power plants between Lake Estes and the mouth of the Big Thompson Canyon was instead released directly from Olympus Dam to the Big Thompson River. That bumped flows in the canyon up to around 150 cubic feet per second where they stayed for about a week.

"With the 150 cfs being released from Lake Estes, but no water coming in, the water level elevation at Estes dropped a little over a foot a day until it reached the elevation it is currently at now: 7460 feet, or about 15 feet down from full," said Kara Lamb, the Bureau of Reclamation public information officer. "Then, we curtailed the releases back to native inflow and are now holding steady. Our plan is to keep Lake Estes at this elevation until mid-December."

Lamb said the bureau, the agency that manages the lake, drops the water level down to this elevation every two to three years for regular maintenance projects.

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"Sometimes, there is a shoreline clean-up that occurs when the water level is down, but we didn't get that organized this year," she said. "However, the Estes Sanitation District will be performing sand removal from the western side of Lake Estes while the water is low. Sand removal is scheduled to start this coming Monday, Nov. 26."

Water levels at Marys Lake will not be drawn down this year as they were in 2011.

"Currently, we are releasing about 20 cfs from Olympus Dam to the Big Thompson Canyon," said Lamb. "That is natural flow in the Big Thompson coming down from the mountains; so, we are passing that through Lake Estes on downstream."

The annual maintenance projects scheduled for this fall on the Colorado-Big Thompson are expect to begin wrapping up on Dec. 7. Diversions through the Adams Tunnel will resume and the water level elevation at Lake Estes will start to rise again.

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